Gun rights

Gun rights is a major political issue in the United States, which is legally regarded as a fundamental right according to the 1788 US Constitution (the Second Amendment in the US Bill of Rights). The Second Amendment declared that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed," a statement which gun owners used to justify their possession of weapons (seeing themselves as a militia). By 2018, US citizens owned 393 million firearms, and up to 42% of households owned at least one gun. The gun rights movement is often challenged by the gun control movement, which seeks to, at least, restrict gun ownership, or, at most, abolish it.